"You said you saw my mother again after her marriage-where was that?" she asked.

"In Newport, Rhode Island. I went there to buy horses, and we met unexpectedly in a hotel, just as you and I the other evening."

"Was she was she happy?"

"Of course she was happy. She was one of the most beautiful women of her day, and married to a rich man who was certainly devoted to her. She moved in the best society, both in America and in Europe. By the way, her closest friends were the Van Raltens in the States and the Duchesse de Brasnes in Paris. Have you ever come across any members of those families?"

"I know Mrs. Van Ralten very well. Her daughter was at school with me at Brussels."

"Then Mr. Marten hardened his heart, and parted from you for a time?"

"Yes. I see now that it was bad for a girl to be always at home or in hotels, with governesses. Fortunately, Father had to be away a good deal, in Russia and elsewhere; so I was sent to school, where I was taught what little I know."

Thus was an unforeseen shoal safely navigated, and Power took care that Newport was lost sight of. As he and Dacre walked up the valley to their abode, the latter broke a long silence by saying:

"Again I ask, Derry-is it wise?"

"And again I answer that years of suffering entitle one to the fleeting pleasure of seeing and speaking to Nancy's daughter."

"But she is Marten's daughter, too, and he may prove difficult."

"Let him. I have fought stronger adversaries, and won through in the end."

Secretary Howard joined them that night. After dinner he inquired if Power had ever had any dealings with Mowlem & Son, a firm of lawyers in New York.

"No," said Power. "The name is not familiar to me."

66

Queer thing! A man who represented himself as their London agent called at my hotel yesterday and inquired if it was correct that you were in Devonshire. I said yes, and asked his business. He explained that Mowlem & Son wanted to know, and that was all he could, or would, tell me. I was inclined to believe him."

"Perhaps it is the usual hue and cry after a bloated capitalist."

"I rather fancy not. This fellow seemed to lay stress on your presence here. Besides, the companypromoting crowd have learned long since that you are unapproachable."

"At such a moment one might mention a peak in Darien," laughed Dacre, and the incident lapsed into the limbo of insignificant happenings.

Thenceforth Power met Nancy day after day. The approaching fête supplied the girl with a ready excuse for these regular visits to village and rectory. Power believed, though he did not seek enlightenment, that she had not spoken of him to her father. One day, when she was accompanied by the sleek, olive-skinned man

he had seen at Bournemouth, she rather avoided him, and he ascertained from an awe-stricken rustic that the stranger was a prince, but of what dynasty his informant could not say.

ness.

At their next meeting he rallied the girl on her aloofShe withered him with an indignant glance. "Come!" she said imperiously, taking him from the schoolhouse in which a committee was assembled, and making for the tiny stone pier which sheltered a small estuary from southwesterly gales.

"I've got to tell you some day, and you may as well know now," she said, with a curious hardness of tone which she had probably acquired from Marten by the trick of association. "You loved my mother, and ought to have married her. If all was nice and providential in the best of all possible worlds, you would have been my father. Oh, you needn't flinch because I say that! If you were my father, I'm sure you wouldn't force me to marry a man I detest. That person who came with me yesterday is the high and mighty Principe del Montecastello. I have to marry him, and I hate him!"

Power's face went very pale. His hour had struck. He looked out over a smiling ocean; but the eyes of his soul saw a broken vista of barren hills, snow-crowned and glacier-ribbed, while howling torrents rushed through the depths of ravines choken with the débris of avalanches and rotting pines. His own voice sounded hollow and forlorn in his ears.

"In these days no woman need marry a man she hates," he was saying, aware of a dull effort to ward off a waking nightmare by the spoken word.

"You know better than that," she retorted, with the bitter logic of youth. "What am I to do? The man I love, and would marry if I could, is poor. He is_too honorable to-to- Oh, I don't know what I mean-only this, that a millionaire's daughter can be bought and sold like any other girl, even a princess, when what men call 'important interests' are at

stake."

"You say you have chosen another man?" he said brokenly.

"Yes, the dearest boy. Oh, Mr. Power, I wish you knew him! I have faith in you. Perhaps you could help-if only for my dear mother's safe."

She was crying now; but her streaming eyes sought his with wistful confidence.

"Yes. I will help, for your dear mother's sake," he said. "Be brave, and drive away those tears. They -they hurt. I-I saw your mother crying once. Now tell me everything. If I would be of any real assistance, I must know how to shape my efforts."

CHAPTER XIX

THE SETTLEMENT

NANCY'S pitiful little story was soon told. During the last year she had often met the Honorable Philip Lindsay, second son of an impoverished Scottish peer, and now a lieutenant in a line regiment stationed at Aldershot. They discovered each other, in the first instance, at a hunt ball in Leicestershire, and a simple confusion of names led the man to believe that the pretty girl with the blue eyes was the hired companion of the daughters of the family with whom she was staying. Her friends-like herself, just emancipated from the schoolroom-fostered the deception, which she and they found amusing; but Lindsay's Celtic blood was fired by the knowledge that he had found the one woman in the world he wanted to marry, be she poor as Cinderella. Before the girl realized that the handsome young soldier was not of the carpetknight type, he was telling her he loved her, and asking her to wait for him till he got his captaincy or secured an adjutant's berth in a territorial battalion, and they would wed.

Of course, there were explanations, and tears, and a good deal of the white-lipped tragedy of youth. Lindsay, like a gallant gentleman, refused to be dubbed a fortune-hunter, and went back to his regiment, where he threw himself into the dissipation of musketry in